Abstracts:
Part I of this paper deals with policy, legal and organisational aspects of contingency planning. First, it tries to identify the major expectations that are directed towards contingency planning. Further it presents and discusses the legal and organisational aspects of contingency planning in Norway. The point of departure is the obligation laid down in the Pollution Control Act for anyone operating an enterprise which could cause acute pollution to provide for a contingency system to prevent and limit the effect of the pollution.
Part II of the paper deals with the which extent a coastal state has a right to intervene in case of a maritime accident taking place in open waters or in its territorial waters.
Part I.
Policy, organisational and legal aspects of contingency planning
Introduction
When discussing oil spill combattment and contingency planning, focus is often directed towards the equipment. The efficiency of different technologies' like oil booms, skimmers, chemical dispersants, biological remediesmay be dicussed extensively. However the equipment is only one part of the picture. Policy aspects, the legal framework and in particular the organisational superstructure are parts of the contingency planning that will also have to be addressed in order to make the picture complete. Policy aspects are maybe the most diffuse of the three. This will be dealt with as a separate issue. The legal and organisational aspects are on a superior level interlinked and will be discussed together.
1. Policy aspects
The expectations that are generally directed towards the oil contingency system are many. A country that experiences a major oil spill at its coasts, as by now a large number of countries have unfortunately done, knows how the oil spill quickly becomes of major concern to the entire society. The pictures of oil that has polluted miles of beaches and shoreline, and in particular seabirds that are slowly dying covered with oil, has in many ways become the illustration of the modere society's harm to and imbalance with the nature. A major oil spill will soon be recognised as an environmental disaster. While the impacts are spreading and the cleanup costs are rising, the search for scapegoats is without mercy.
There is usually a strong demand for concrete action to strengthen the oil spill contingency system after a major oil spill incident. There is a considerable willingness to spend money on new equipment in order to demonstrate ability to take action. That may be very well, but the chance of failure already at the next incident is considerable if improvements are not also made within the legal and organisational fields.
In general the expectations to the contingency system are very high. A general policy aspect in this context will be to pave the ground for more realistic expectations. To this end we have in Norway over the last years considered it important to repeatedly tell the public that if an oil spill occurs close to the shore, then oil will reach the coast. It is not realistic to expect that all the oil may be recovered on the sea, despite the fact that we possess good equipment. Bad weather with heavy winds and high waves are conditions when even the most advanced oil spill systems will have to (capitulate).
At the same time, for those who have the responsibility for building up, maintaining and improving the national contingency systems on a more day to day basis, there is a need for a tool or specific criteria to define and evaluate the efficiency of the contingency system. In Norway we have developed 4 simple criteria for the purpose of evaluating the efficiency of an oil spill contingency system. Certainly this may be done more sophisticate, but the benefit of having an easy system is that it is easier to communicate and to understand.
The 4 criteria that we use are:
・ time for response
・ treatment capacity
・ professional skill
・ endurance
Time for response is the time it takes from the warning of an oil spill is received till the organisation is ready to start the recovery of oil or other mitigating measures. This is for instance for oil drilling operations
